Continued story of too early/too late. I got up extremely early, 5 am, Ed at 6. I ate my free breakfast and then we walked across the street to the Boothill Museum.
I wasn't expecting much and so I was surprised that there was so much to see. (Except for money in the bank vault)
There appeared to have only been about 30 recorded graves there (maybe less--check me before you believe that).
We lingered in the museum until time to check out of the hotel, then headed east for the first stop of the journey, the Fort Larned National Historic Site. It was almost deserted except for a few interpreters, dressed in character. It was big, mostly original buildings that had been restored, crammed full of old stuff, and dressed out with historically accurate displays. They were absolutely excellent! A little more explanation might have been nice, but the people were willing to explain all we wanted whenever we asked.
Forgetting that we had a significant drive to Wichita and two waterfowl refuges I wanted to visit, we spent way too much time there. When we finally left and got to the first of the refuges, it was afternoon and I was ready for a snack. We picnicked briefly, watched a horrible, ancient film about the Cheyenne Bottoms Nature Preserve, then started driving out to see the birds. It was a long, slow drive on gravel roads and my contact lenses were driving me wild. When we finally got around where the birds were, the idea of a 2-1/2 hour drive onto Wichita was getting me down.
There were a lot of birds--too many birds, too far away and no time to name them all. The only one I got for sure was the White-faced Ibis, although of course I recognized Great Blue Heron, Great Egret and Snowy Egret. Possibly Black-necked Stilt. ID'ing anything else would have taken too darn long, and soon we left.
But not before going out of our way to see a prairie dog town where burrowing owls had recently been spotted. It turned out to be another long drive on gravel rods and the actual dog town was on private property and far enough from the road that we could only see them clearly with binoculars.
Note to all: no more prairie dog towns on private property!
It wasn't a bad drive--Ed had done the morning shift so I took over the the afternoon. We got to the hotel well before dark. It was nice -- a Marriot -- but had a couple of weird issues. Plus I'd been misinformed that all of the rooms had balconies, but they didn't. The desk clerk kindly changed our room to one that did. The balcony was tiny, overlooked the freeway, and had no chairs. No problem, that--we brought our own.
The room wan't that bad, it's just that we expected more. The really bad thing that happened was that it was 7:45 on a Sunday evening and most of the restaurants I'd chosen closed at 8:00. The Mexican restaurant was open, but I was tired and didn't want to dress up and go out at that hour.
We should have done it. Instead we got fast food--that is, Ed got faast food but I wanted Chipotle until I saw that the line was long and there were only two people working in front. I chose to eat my leftovers from lunch--which were excellent--and snack on bugles. Fresh bugles out of the bag--awesome. Better than Chipotle and defnitely better than Popeyes. That's the problem with learning how to cook--at some point you get to where you like your own cooking better than 95% of restarurant food.
The day wasn't a loss, but it seemed like one. Too many things went wrong, but on balance, a few things went right. We kept our good humor and (at least I can testify) didn't get on each others nerves too much.
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